Separation of Power (47 page)

The Delta operators and Rapp moved toward the nondescript metal door en masse. None of them knew what to expect on the other side. The lead man shoved open the door just as an earthshaking explosion occurred from a bomb strike nearby.

The Iraqi soldier standing in the small room had a wall phone to his ear and a machine gun slung over his shoulder. His eyes were wide open with fear from either the explosion or the sudden arrival of the Special Republican Guard unit.

Whichever the case, Rapp did not wait around to find out. Remembering his words to the Delta operators, Rapp pushed his way through the men, limping like Uday Hussein would, and in Arabic yelled, “Hang up the phone!”

The man mumbled something quickly into the phone and nervously placed it in its cradle. Snapping to attention, he saluted Rapp and said, “General Hussein, we are under attack by the Americans. We must get you down to the shelter.”

“I know we are under attack, you idiot! That is why I’m here. Take me to the bombs.”

Without hesitation the guard turned and inserted a key into a riveted steel door. He yanked it open and gestured for the man he thought to be Uday Hussein to enter. Rapp did so and stepped into a
slightly larger room. The guard nervously inserted another key into a box on the wall. Two heavy doors slid back to reveal a large freight elevator. Everyone piled in and the guard pressed one of two buttons.

Rapp asked, “Is Dr. Lee here?”

The guard would not look Rapp in the eyes. “I’m sorry, General Hussein?”

“The Korean,” he yelled.

“Yes, I think so,” the man answered nervously.

“Who were you on the phone with when I arrived?”

“Headquarters, General.”

“Why?”

“They are sending more men over just in case.”

The Delta operators on the street could not hear what the Iraqi soldier was saying, so Rapp said, “Headquarters is sending men! Those idiots! All they’ll do is attract attention to this place.”

The elevator stopped and the doors opened. Two guards were waiting for them. Both were at attention with their rifles at port, standing one on each side of a huge blast door. The guard who had ridden down with them asked, “I can call headquarters, General, and tell them not to send the men.”

“Yes, do that!” Rapp yelled. He continued forward, marching with his fake limp through the blast door into a cavernous room, at least 100 feet by 300 feet, with 20-foot ceilings.

Major Berg appeared at Rapp’s side and in Arabic whispered, “Cameras.”

Rapp looked up and in one sweep found four of them. He pulled the major close and said, “Deploy
your men. Leave two of them here to take care of the guards.” Rapp heard a loud humming noise and turned to see the large blast door moving.

“Stop!” screamed Rapp. “I gave no order to close that door!”

The guard at the wall smacked a red button with the palm of his hand and snapped to attention. Rapp barked at him, “Call headquarters and tell them I’m going to cut the balls off of the idiot who decided to draw attention to this place!”

The guard ran for the nearest phone and snatched the handset from its cradle. Rapp looked the length of the chamber and spotted a clean room against the far wall. Inside the glass-walled, environmentally controlled room he could see several people in white lab coats and hairnets. Rapp set out for the room with Major Berg and four of the operators. Rapp burst into the room and looked at the five Korean men covered from head to toe in surgical garb. “Dr. Lee!”

One of the men came toward them waving his arms. Rapp assumed it was Dr. Lee. In heavily accented English he said, “No . . . no . . . you can’t come in here dressed like that.”

Rapp drew one of the nickel-plated .45s, cocked the hammer, pointed it at the doctor’s head and screamed, “No one tells me what to do!”

The scientist stopped in his tracks and lowered his head. “I’m sorry.”

“Where are the weapons?” he yelled. Rapp had no idea if Dr. Lee had ever met Uday, but the disguise appeared to be working so far.

“The weapons?” asked the Korean.

“The bombs, you idiot! The Americans know about them. An air attack is under way and one of our spies tells us they are preparing to drop one of their special bombs on this place.”

“But they aren’t ready.”

“I don’t care if they aren’t ready!” Rapp pointed to a cart on the other side of the room. “Put the crucial parts on that cart immediately! We have to get out of here fast!”

Dr. Lee turned and started giving orders to his people in Korean. Rapp glanced over his shoulder and looked at the two Delta operators who specialized in explosives and had been briefed on what to look for. With a head jerk from Rapp the two men set out to keep an eye on the scientists. Rapp grabbed Major Berg by the arm and walked back out into the large chamber. “Have your men leave one of the charges in that clean room.” Each member of the assault team was wearing a satchel around their waist that contained enough C4 plastic explosives to level a house.

The major nodded. “Good enough. I’m going to put another satchel over by those canisters of liquid nitrogen.”

“Make sure you save one for the elevator.”

The guard who Rapp had told to call headquarters approached nervously. “General Hussein.” The man stopped just out of Rapp’s reach. “I’m sorry, but headquarters reports that your brother Qusai has given the order to secure the facility with his troops. They want me to shut the blast doors.”

This was big trouble. Qusai was Uday’s older brother and their father’s successor. “You incompetent fool!” Rapp lunged forward and slapped the man across the face. The guard dropped to his knees in a sign of submission. Rapp looked to Berg and mouthed the words,
Hurry up.
Addressing the cowering guard Rapp yelled, “Get up! You are coming with me.”

Rapp marched the man back across the room and into the waiting elevator. They rode it back upstairs in silence. When the doors opened Rapp took one of his pistols and pointed it at the man’s head. “Go back down there and help my men, and don’t even think about closing those blast doors. If you do I will have your eyeballs cut out!”

Rapp left the elevator and went back out onto the street. As he emerged from the building two hulking armored personnel carriers came around the corner. The first thing Rapp heard was one of the Delta operators say. “Shit, we’ve got two Russian BTR-80s. Get the LAWs ready.”

Rapp limped off in the direction of the steel monsters. Over the group’s comlink he said, “Hold tight for a second, guys. Let me see what I can do.” He stopped the vehicles halfway down the block by sticking out his hand and holding his ground. The vehicles stopped and one of the doors opened. An Iraqi colonel appeared wearing an SRG uniform. Rapp instantly knew he was in trouble. There was a good chance this officer had dealt with Uday on a more intimate level.

Rapp kept up the façade. “Colonel, get your men out of here immediately. My father has sent me on a
special mission. If he finds out you were here he will have your head.”

The officer stopped eight feet from Rapp and looked at him strangely. With a frown on his face he asked, “Uday?”

Rapp could tell by the look on the man’s face that he had pushed his luck far enough. With lightning speed he drew his gun and fired a shot straight into the center of the colonel’s forehead. The heavy .45-caliber round knocked the man from his feet and sent him to the street. Rapp stepped forward, screaming at the top of his lungs, “How dare you talk about my father that way!” He squeezed off three more rounds into the already dead body and spat on it. Then, looking up at the armored personnel carrier he waved his gun in the air and yelled, “Get out of here right now, or my father will have your heads!”

Quickly Rapp turned and limped back toward the cars. Over the team’s comnet he said, “I sure hope you guys have got those rockets ready.”

“Roger that,” someone said.

“Then use them right now, before they have a chance to call in what I just did.” Rapp watched as one of the Delta operators reached into the car and pulled out a LAW 80 rocket. He expertly extended it into firing position, stepped clear of the car and yelled, “Get down!”

Rapp dove for the pavement and before he hit the ground he heard the loud swooshing noise of the 94-mm rocket leaving the tube. A split second later there was an incredible explosion and the armored
personnel carrier burst into flames. With debris still falling Rapp saw one of the other Delta operators run to the other side of the street with a second LAW in his hand. The man dropped to his knee in a doorway, acquired the second armored personnel carrier in his sights and fired.

Rapp covered his ears, the explosion lifting his body off the ground an inch. After a moment he scrambled to his feet. As machine-gun fire erupted he raced for the building and yelled, “Major Berg, our cover’s been blown, get up here ASAP!”

Rapp ran into the building and made it to the elevator. “Give me an update, Major.”

“We’ve got the bombs, or at least the parts that matter most.”

“Wax the guards and get up here,” said Rapp with urgency.

“What about the scientists?”

“Fuck!” He’d forgot about them. He looked around for a moment and said, “Bring ’em all up, and do it fast.”

“Roger.”

Rapp went back to the street. The shooting, at least for now, had stopped. Nervously, he looked at his watch and swore under his breath, wishing the rest of the team was already up here. The Delta operators had fanned out a bit and were scanning in every direction, ready to shoot anything that moved. Rapp headed back to the elevator and paced back and forth until the door opened. When it did, two Delta operators raced past him with the cart. Next,
Dr. Lee stepped off, loudly protesting in English that the components were too fragile to be moved like this.

Rapp delivered a well placed left hook to the scientist’s jaw and grabbed him as he began to crumple. Tossing Lee over his shoulder, Rapp motioned for the other scientists to get off the elevator. They stood cowering in the corner as one of Major Berg’s men threw his satchel charge into the elevator and pressed the button to send it back down. The doors closed and the whine of the elevator could be heard as the cable unwound. Rapp backed out of the room and yelled at the other scientists, “Do not leave this room or you will be shot!”

With that he closed the door, went through the small room and out onto the street. Rapp dumped Lee’s body into the trunk of the last car and put a pair of flex cuffs on his wrists.

Berg appeared at his side. “What in the hell are you doing?”

“Dr. Lee is going to spend the next several years of his life telling us everything he knows about Saddam’s nuclear weapons program.”

Berg grinned. “Good idea. Now can we get the hell out of here?”

“Yep. Have one of your men close that door over there and set one more satchel charge with a thirty-second delay.”

Berg barked the orders in Arabic, and his men went to work. One by one they retreated to the vehicles and loaded up. The gunners standing in the
sunroofs covered the withdrawal until the last man was in. Each car did a head count and Berg gave the order to move out.

The cars sped away from the burning vehicles to the sound of air raid sirens and antiaircraft guns, punctuated by the heavy explosions of bombs. The night sky was ablaze with tracer fire and the streets were empty. The bombing had driven people for cover. Moments later they turned onto Shari’ Al Urdun, another major thoroughfare, and punched it. Less than a mile later the road turned into Route 10, an empty six-lane highway. As Major Berg radioed Colonel Gray their status, the cars flew down the road at 110 mph toward the waiting choppers, safety, and success.

C
olonel Gray had informed General Flood via secure satellite uplink that the team had achieved their primary goal without any casualties and was en route to Scorpion I for extraction. The room erupted in a premature show of excitement that was quickly doused when the president reminded everyone that they weren’t out of the woods yet.

Hayes felt as if something was trying to eat its way out of his stomach. He was so tense he’d taken to pacing back and forth along one side of the conference table. While this may have helped the commander in chief relax a bit, it did little to comfort the others in the room. In the midst of the battle the president felt the walls closing in. This was, bar none, the boldest, most difficult decision of his political life. He knew without the slightest doubt that he’d made the right choice, but that didn’t mean he had to like it. Somewhere in the back of his mind he knew that Israel had played him. They had sent Ben Freidman to Washington knowing full well that America wouldn’t ignore the information. If Israel were to take matters into their own hands and bomb Iraq it would shatter the Arab coalition that was organized
against Saddam. Israel knew Hayes would have to act.

This somehow tainted everything he’d done during the last week. Robert Hayes was a proud man, and he wanted to do the right thing for the right reasons. He didn’t enjoy being played. He didn’t enjoy being caught up in other people’s schemes. In the midst of his pacing he came to a decision. Some things were going to change as soon as the mission was over. If it failed he was done. And not just kind of done,
really
done. The only way he was going to be able to put out the fire started by Congressman Rudin was with complete victory. Anything short of that and his enemies would ravage him. Hayes had no false illusions about the future. If Rapp and the Delta team failed to get out of Iraq with the nukes, he would be crucified.

As Hayes continued pacing he glanced over at the big board and stared at the five blue triangles west of Baghdad. If only they would start moving. The president’s eyes shifted to one of the other TVs which was showing CNN. His eyes squinted in genuine hatred at the man on the screen. Congressman Albert Rudin was on the screen ranting and raving about the bombing. Hayes had already caught his act on MSNBC twenty minutes earlier. He was sure that before the night was over Rudin would make his
Wag the Dog
innuendo on every network and cable outlet in America. The irritating ass was already asking for hearings into the bombings.